180 WILLIAM BARTRAM 



A fairly faithful adaptation — except the owls, but they too, we 

 have seen, are in Bartram, though in a different place. That 

 there are numerous other places in Madoc where Southey drew 

 upon Bartram is a plausible hypothesis. He himself has told us 

 that he had at first planned to locate the poem in Peru, and then 

 changed to Florida. " Here," he writes, " instead of the Peru- 

 vians, who have no striking manners for my poem, we get 

 among the wild North American Indians ; on their customs and 

 superstitions, facts must be grounded, and woven into the 

 work. . . . " ^ That he gained his facts largely from travel books is 

 obvious from his own footnotes. Professor Fairchild is justified 

 in his comment that " Madoc ... is simply crammed with sav- 

 age lore," ® and cites Southey's references to " Franklin, Carver, 

 Lafitau, Charlevoix, Mackenzie, Oviedo, Torquemada, Bernal 

 Diaz, Padilla, Garcia, Clavigero, Bartram, Garcilaso de la Vega, 

 Herrera, Heriot, Timberlake, Pietro Martire, Brainerd, Roger 

 Williams, Priest, and Pero Nino." ® This is not a complete list 

 of Southey's sources of his American lore. Another list could 

 be drawn up from his entries in his Common-Place Books. For 

 instance, in a section entitled, " American Tribes, Incidental and 

 Miscellaneous Illustrations " (Second Series) , he draws upon 

 many of the authorities already mentioned and also upon Langs- 

 dorff, Fleckno, Dobrizhoffer, La Codamine, Vancouver, Adair, 

 Perez de Ribas, Bandini, Buchanan, Stedman, Du Pratz, Volney, 

 Winterbottom, Gage, Nieuhoff , Cockburn, De Monts, Baron de 

 Lahontan, Hubbard, De la Salle, Smith, Hennepin, and Wool- 

 man. Nor is this a complete list. It is only logical to assume 

 that if Southey wanted " savage lore" of Florida he could not 

 ignore Bartram's Travels. 



It is important to remember once more that the poetic imagi- 

 nation adapts, combines, and transmutes the material it borrows. 

 Southey's Songs of the American Indians bear titles which ^ 

 would seem to exclude the possibility of a Bartram influence. 

 "The Huron's Address to the Dead," "The Peruvian's Dirge 

 over the Body of his Father," "' Song of the Araucans " — these 



''Life and Correspondence, II, 21. Letter to Thomas Southey, Friday, July 

 12, 1799. 

 • The Noble Savage, p. 199. ' Ibid., p. 206. 



